The Legacy of Former "Colored" School No. 4, a talk by Eric K. Washington

This illustrated talk by historian Eric K. Washington visits an unassuming building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood that, in shedding light on 19th-century Gotham’s forgotten past, has excited wide media attention. Hidden in plain sight on West 17th Street is the former “Colored” School No. 4, the last of a network of racial-caste public schoolhouses that once were relegated to New York’s African American teachers and students. Built in 1849-50, the city-owned building’s decades-long use spanned the eras of the Antebellum Period, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. Washington spearheaded the collaborative community preservation effort that culminated in 2023 with both the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission designating the curiously idle building a historic landmark and the city’s mayor pledging $6 million towards its rehabilitation. His talk will highlight many of the notable teachers, students and events once associated with this remarkably surviving Black heritage site.

Eric K. Washington is an independent historian and author, and was the preeminent advocate of Manhattan's (Former) Colored School No. 4, where one of the school’s pupils in the 1880s-90s was the protagonist of his book, Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal. His book won the Herbert H. Lehman Prize for Distinguished Scholarship of New York History, the Guides Association of New York City’s GANYC Apple Award and a special recognition from the Municipal Art Society’s Brendan Gill Prize selection committee. Washington was awarded the Historic District Council’s 2023 Grassroots Preservation Award, and the Victorian Society of New York's 2022 Preservation Award. In March he is to receive the 2025 GANYC Lifetime Achievement Award.

In-person admission is $5/ person.

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